Committee Member Committee Member

East Meets West: The Influence from Japanese Traditional Kimono to 1980s Japanese Fashion
Designers and Further Influence Western Fashion.
Tiantian Sun
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree of Master of Fine Arts in Fashion Design
at
Savannah College of Art and Design
©May 2013, Tiantian Sun
The author hereby grants SCAD permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic
thesis copies of document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter created.
Signature of Author and Date__________________________________________________________
_______Denis Antonie___________________________________________________/___/___
(Type name here)(Sign here)(Date here)
Committee Chair
______Marie Aja-Herrera________________________________________________/___/___
(Type name here)(Sign here)(Date here)
Committee Member
_________Laura Love___________________________________________________/___/_
(Type name here)(Sign here)(Date here)
Committee Member
East Meets West: The Influence from Japanese Traditional Kimono on 1980s Japanese Fashion
Designers and Further Influences on Western Fashion.
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Fashion Design
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the
Degree of Master of Fine Art in Fashion Design
Savannah College of Art and Design
By
Tiantian Sun
Savannah, GA
May 2013
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Figures
Pg. 1
Abstract
Pg. 2
Chapter One
1.1 Introduction
Pg. 3
Chapter Two: The kimono
2.1 The Kimono
Pg. 4
2.2 The Geisha
Pg. 11
Chapter Three: Japanese Fashion Designers Come to West
3.1 Japanese Fashion Designers Come to West
Pg. 18
3.2 A New School: Three Japanese Avant-Garde Fashion Designers
Pg. 19
Issey Miyake
Pg. 19
Yohji Yamamoto
Pg. 22
Rei Kawakubo
Pg. 25
3.3 The New Aesthetic
Pg. 30
3.4 Fabric Choices
Pg. 33
Chapter Four: The Avant-Garde
4.1 The Avant-Garde
Pg. 42
Chapter Five: The Influence
5.1 The Influence of Japanese Fashion on West fashion
Pg. 46
Chapter Six: Conclusion
6.1 Conclusion
Pg. 52
Work Cited
Pg. 53
Sun 1
LIST OF FIGURE
Fig 1. Kimono: Fashioning Culture. P. 19.
Page.5
Fig 2. Kimono: Fashioning Culture. P. 40.
Page.7
Fig 3. Kimono: Fashioning Culture. P. 201.
Page.8
Fig 4. Kimono: Fashioning Culture. P. 47.
Page.8
Fig 5. Kimono: Fashioning Culture. P. 47.
Page.9
Fig 6. Kimono: Fashioning Culture. P. 169.
Page.10
Fig 7. Kimono: Fashioning Culture. P. 197.
Page.14
Fig 8. Thesis collection
Page.17
Fig 9. Feel Design (blog)
Page. 21
Fig 10. Style Bubble (blog)
Page.22
Fig 11. Yohii Yamamoto, P. 22
Page.24
Fig 12. Metmuseum.org
Page.28
Fig 13.Thesis Collection
Page.29
Fig 14. Yohji Yamamoto, P. 27
Page.31
Fig 15. Thesis Collection: H line dress
Page.33
Fig 16. 21_21 Documents(blog)
Page.34
Fig 17. MTV IGGY
Page.35
Fig 18. Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History
Page.36
Fig 19. Penniless, Zen.
Page.37
Fig 20. Yohji Yamamoto, P. 21.
Page.39
Fig 21. Gothic Tropic (blog)
Page.40
Fig 22. Thesis Collection
Page.41
Fig 23. Style. com.
Page.44
Sun 2
East Meets West: The Influence from Japanese Traditional Kimono on 1980s Japanese Fashion
Designers and Further Influences on Western Fashion.
Tiantian Sun
May 2013
In the early 1980’s, Japanese fashion designers led by Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto and Rei
Kawakubo debuted their designs in Paris. Their work invigorated the western fashion world
because of the designs’ unisex look, novel cutting and folding techniques, and fabric creation.
These Japanese designers found their inspiration in the traditional fashion of Japan including the
kimono, Japanese folk costume and Japanese fabric making techniques. These artists’ vision was
also shaped by core Japanese culture concepts and life in post-WWII Japan. This thesis explains
how Japanese culture and costume inspired the designers and imbued their designs to western
fashion with Japanese elements that unfamiliar for western. The thesis continues to show how
the inspiration and vision of the designers can be incorporated into contemporary fashion
developments, and also shows how those Japanese fashion characteristics are taken into the
thesis collection with different forms.
Sun 3
Chapter One: Introduction
In the early 1980’s, because of a despondent economy in Japan, a group of national designers
went abroad to Europe and revolutionized the European fashion industry. They redefined the
concepts of deconstruction and minimalism that were used in fashion design worldwide. These
Japanese fashion designers were the first group of Asian designers bringing Asian cultural
inspiration into European fashion. They presented a Japanese national spirit and culture to
Europeans, inspiring a fashion revolution in Europe, which spread worldwide. In this group of
designers, Yohji Yamamoto, Rei Kawakubo (Comme des Garçons) and Issey Miyake are the
most iconic. It was these Japanese designers who used a Japanese national symbol of
clothing—the kimono—as their inspiration, exploring their inventive Japanese cutting methods
to build their collections.
Their style is supported by unique Japanese customs and Asian humanistic spirit. Women’s
wear, menswear and unisex are often used by Japanese designers, and this way of designing
appeals to female power and the contemporary aesthetic of beauty. This paper concentrates on
the history and tradition of the kimono and how these traditional elements influenced and
supported the collections of Yohji Yamamoto, Rei Kawakubo (Comme des Garçons) and Issey
Miyake. Japanese fashion influenced other designers, it is therefore essential to analyze how
these influences affected Western Fashion. This thesis is going to focus on Yohji Yamamoto, Rei
Kawakubo (Comme des Garçons) and Issey Miyake’s new aesthetic, fabric choices and their
avant-garde design style to look for the Japanese influence in the whole western fashion.
Sun 4
Chapter Two: The Kimono
2.1 The Kimono
The Kimono is the internationally recognized Japanese national costume. Before diving into
the fashion of the kimono, research into the reasons as to why the Japanese kept this style is a
valuable clue into the garment’s rich history. According to Liza Dalby’s statement in Kimono,
Fashioning Culture, “The allure of the back view of a feminine figure, the ushiro sugata, has
been recognized in Japanese culture for a thousand years. Kimono styles evolved with this in
mind”(328).
In addition to the concentration on the back, the taiko-fold is a integral part of the kimono.
The inspiration of this fold is the Taiko Bashi bridge in Tokyo. At the inauguration of the Taiko
Bashi bridge, geisha who were attending this event used the taiko tie. The taiko tie, which
remembers the important influence geisha have had on the kimono, is still a part of the kimono
design.
The kimono has experienced many different changes as Japanese history and society
progressed. Looking at today’s Japanese kimono, although it still keeps some traditional costume
characteristics and shadows such as basic form and structure, when going back to the beginning
and looking at those different eras, some changes can clearly be seen. According to Dalby’s
description, when the sleeves keep the same basic construction, it produces a length that covers
the fingertips. For ease, the sleeve could be pulled back to the wrist. Later, it was closed up, hung
free, and has been cut again (18). Similar to the sleeves, the collar, the body shape and the obi
also have developed. Later, these changes will be described in greater detail. In parts of “The
Kimono Body”, Dalby carefully describes the kimono’s basic construction and sewing method:
Sun 5
A kimono is made from a bolt of cloth of a standard width of approximately
fourteen inches. A bolt of clothe of a standard width of approximately fourteen
inches. A bolt contains approximately twelve and a half yards, enough to make
one adult-sized garment. Kimono wearers have always chosen their kimono in
bolt form, which they then order sewn up to their measurements. […]
Two straight lengths of fabric make up the kimono body. They are joined up the
middle of the back and left open over the shoulder down the front. Two half-width
sections (okumi) are sewed on to each side. The okumi provides amplitude of
fabric where the gown is lapped, left over right side, and held together by a sash at
waist or hip. The neckband or collar (eri) is a folded strip of cloth attached to the
front opening around the neckline reaching about a third of the way down the
okumi on each side. Sleeves (sode) consist of another width of the bolt attached to
the sides of the body. (18-19)
Fig.1. This is the basic structure of a kimono (Kawaruma19)
Sun 6
From this description of making a kimono, the way of using fabric to make the garments is
extremely economical, and no matter how many yards of fabric are used to make one, people can
easily figure out how to make one. The Japanese just fold excess fabric at the seam to fit
different sized people. This two- dimensional method of making clothing has become one part of
the basic technology of today’s Japanese pattern making methodology.
The main part of the kimono is the kimono robe. As far as the kimono sewing method for
different genders, the basic kimono cutting technique for men and women doesn’t have major
differences, resulting in the basic modern kimono for women being also wearable by men.
However, some differences persist. The first one is the different colors and print patterns for
men and women. As Dalby states in “Kimono in the Modern World” section of Kimono,
Fashioning Culture.
The modern male kimono is the drabber of the species. Charcoal grays,
brown-toned blacks, seaweed greens, and wine-dark cyans constitute its hues. If
there is a pattern at all, a man’s kimono will sport a subdued small-scale repeat.
The sole design will be the crest at mid-back and shoulder, and only on the formal
kimono. A few men indulge love of color and pattern through painted silk linings,
which do not show, or inside the haori jacket, where a glimpse can be discreetly
flashed (168).
Other ways to distinguish the difference between men’s and women’s kimono are from the
lengths of the robe and the sleeves. From Dalby’s information, the length of a man’s kimono is
straight from shoulder to ankle without any excess to fold into the garment. The women’s
kimono is much longer than her height to reach her ankle, leaving some length to adjust a tie
between the hips to the blouse section (168). The difference with sleeves is more visually
Sun 7
obvious. As Dalby provides, “men’s kimono sleeves are short and they are sewn closed on the
side that touches the body, whereas women’s sleeves are open from underarm to bottom
edge”(168-169).
Aside from the basic construction of the kimono, Japanese artists’ excellent work is
displayed across the style very well, such as reflections by the various colors of dye, the
diametrical paintings, and the exquisite embroideries. Before Yusen was invented, early Edo
kosode was made by more fabrics. During those years in the Edo period Genroku (1688-1704),
yuzen was invented. This dye technique provided freedom for more expression, which is
described by Dalby in “Moronobu’s fashion magazine”: “The dyers sketch an under drawing of
the chosen design on the fabric. The design is then covered with paste or sewed into a section to
be reserved from the overall dye. Details are later hand-painted on this reserved section. The
various sections may be re-dyed, stamped with foil, embroidered, or dapple-dyed and pictures
painted on these areas”(40). Because Yuzen is a more painterly dyeing method compared to
earlier dyeing techniques, artists used their imagination to create more detailed pictures. Yuzen
made those patterns to fit the design of the kimono or kosode, which made the genroku kosode
one of the most beautiful of all kimonos.
Fig.2.A Genroku kosode design (Kawaruma 40)
Sun 8
Another essential part of the kimono, the obi, has experienced the most changes in the
kimono system. According to Dalby’s records, the obi was originally hidden when wearing a
kimono. Today though, the obi has become one of the major elements of a Japanese kimono, in
the beginning, it only served as function. In the early times, there were two types of obis: a rope
like cord (the Nagoya obi) and a narrow three inches wide sash. The development of the obi also
has been different between men and women. The width of men’s obi ranged only from three
inches and developed to six inches in the 1730s, but the women’s obi developed differently (44).
Fig.3. Fancy obis style for unmarried women (Kawaruma 201)
Fig.4. Different obis for women (Kawaruma 47)
Sun 9
Liza Dalby also recorded the development of women’s obi in “The Rise of The Obi”:
“During the early 1600s men and women alike wore a three-inch obi. By 1680, women wore an
obi twice that width. Five years later the woman’s obi was ten inches wide, and by 1800 a
foot-wide obi covered a woman’s torso from pubic bone to sternum”(45). From this point, as an
important part of the kimono, the obi’s width has been developing separately for different
genders, which makes today’s kimonos vary between men and women. Besides the obi’s
evolution of style for different genders, the way of wearing an obi also changed drastically.
As Dalby describes, the obi was used as a tie in front for function before seventeenth century.
Later, fashion trends changed and, as the obi became wider, wearing a front-tie obi was not
convenient for people’s day-to-day lives. People started to wear a back-tie obi because it was
fashionable. Until the end of the seventeenth century, nearly all kimonos had an obi in the back.
The most popular style of obi knot was the Kichiya style (from an actor named Kichiya). The
style was described as “A four- inch-wide obi tied in back in a bow so as to resemble the droopy
ears of a Chinese doggie” (45).
Fig.5. Kichiya obi (Kawaruma 47)
Sun 10
Although people preferred tying their obi in the back, the front-tie obi still existed. It wasn’t
until the twentieth century that an official standard of back-tie obi was established (Dalby 45).
For different situations and places, Japanese wear different obis. Different styles, colors, and
sizes obis match different kimonos, especially for men. According to Dalby’s introduction, when
Japanese men go to ceremonies, they wear a two-inch-wide kaku obi (as Fig.5.left) at the hip to
hold the kimono. For a casual kimono or yukata, men wear comfortable and soft obis as like the
heko obi (as Fig.5.right), which is in the children’s style. The different style for women’s obis is
reflected by the obi’s greatness of width (Dalby 169).
Fig.6. Man’s Kaku obi tied in ‘clam’ month’ knot (left); informal, soft heko obi in a simple bow
(right). (Kawaruma 169)
How one wears a Kimono can also convey a lot of information from small details. The
kimono has similar style and construction. The different color, different prints, and different
ways of wearing tell people a lot of information. For this point, Dalby concluded that
Sun 11
Categories
map
precisely
onto
society
or
aesthetically
articulated
interpretations-which is to say that a glance at a person wearing a kimono
ensemble reveals categorically a number of thing about his or her age, sex, class,
the season, and the occasion, not to mention personal taste or the lack thereof (13).
Although the kimono changed so many times, the fundamental spirit of the kimono, which
can be perceived as a symbol of Japanese culture, is still there. Also, since the kimono has many
strict rules for wearing and conveys a lot of social information, the geisha, as a special group in
Japanese traditional culture, can easily be identified by their strict kimono style.
2.2 The Geisha
In Kimono culture and history, the geisha’s customs play a significant role. In “Geisha and
Kimono” part of Kimono Fashioning Culture, Dalby states that the kimono is one of the main
objects in a geisha’s professional life and reflecting in Geisha’s portrait selling. How popular the
geisha would be and how much money the geisha would charge is related to what she will wear
in the future. Dalby also states that geishas influence the development of the kimono’s history as
well (324). Because of the closed relation between the kimono and geishas, the geisha’s history
and her contribution to the kimono becomes a significant source of information for the
development of kimonos.
In Japan, the Geisha is in a special faction of society. She is not only defined as a category of
prostitute, but also is looked upon as a type of Japanese art. Authors Till, Warkentyne, and Patt
define the geisha in The Kimono of the Geisha-Diva Ichimaru:
In Japan, the occupation of geisha has a long and honorable history. Geishahigh-class, well-educated hostess-courtesans- entertained wealthy, sophisticated,
Sun 12
and powerful Japanese men who desired cultured and brilliant conversation and
elegant entertainment in an atmosphere of decadent refinement. The geisha
profession has lasted so long in Japanese society because it has provided more
than just sex—it was an admire art form (3).
In another book named A Courtesan’s Day: Hour by Hour, the author Alfred Marks gives a
similar statement about the origin of geisha:
The geisha is one of the best known of the many treasures of Japanese
womanhood, past and present. She is the attractive woman who appears at
expensive parties heavily made up and wearing a gorgeous kimono. She plays the
sbamisen, koto or other difficult instruments, pours sake, converses, performs
dances, sings and plays parlour games with the guests, and grants sexual favo(u)rs
as the business occasion or her taste demands. She is, and was, an important
subject of Japanese artists (9)
In addition, as Till, Warkentyne, and Patt state the direct translation of Geisha in The Kimono
of the Geisha-diva Ichimaru is an “accomplished person” or a “person who lives by the art.”
since the word for “geisha” is cooperated by two words: gei which means “art” or “accomplished”
and sha which means “person”(3).
When talking about the history and development of Geisha, Till, Warkentyne, and Patt state
that Edo period (1615-1868) is the first time of going back for geisha tradition. At that time,
there was a separate place for geishas, which was called as pleasure quarter or floating world in
some major cities as like Edo (Tokyo), Osaka, and Kyoto. Until 1779, the Government started to
make rules and regulations for geishas. The first gender as geisha was male. They played as
Sun 13
entertainers, jesters and musicians. Females got into this field until 1780, and they dominate the
whole geisha profession after. (4)
Moreover, Marks puts out analogous information:
Entertainment by ‘geisha’ (literally, ‘art person’) in the Yoshiwara was a first
carried out primarily by men. Not until 1750 or so, in fact, according Downer, did
we have the first woman identifying herself as geisha. ‘Her name was Kikuya and
she was a prostitute who had made a reputation for herself with her sbamisen
playing and singing and decided to make entertaining her full-time profession.’
There, on the banks of the Sumida River, where high-ranking courtesans wore
gorgeous robes and decorous ceremony ruled, the final act of sexual intercourse
seems to have been only part of the entertainment. And in all the rigmarole that
governed the licensed quarter, regulating even the rankings of the prostitutes and
their prices, the woman we know as the geisha eventually found her place. Her
role, however, was clearly circumscribed. Prostitution was the domain of other
professionals (9).
This information shows that the geisha career was first for men. Then, geisha was an
occupation for men and women in its earlier years. Finally it came to be the exclusive purview of
women. Thus, the duality of this male/female role can be seen as one of the multiple sources of
later Japanese fashion designers’ unisex designs.
Because of the geisha’s special position in society, people think the way of wearing a kimono
for a geisha is completely different from average Japanese woman. However, Dalby gives a
different argument, stating, “A geisha usual kimono does not differ greatly from what any other
Japanese woman might wear--- if anything, it may be more subdued”(325). The only difference
Sun 14
of wearing a kimono for geishas and other women is the neckline, as Dalby introduced: “Geisha
have a distinctive formal trailing kimono (known as de, ‘going out’) the neckline of which dips
deeply in back to show off a shapely nape. No one but a geisha dresses this way”(324).
Fig.7. Gauging the set of the collar: “set back a little, an average amount, and a lot”.
(Kawaruma 197)
Kimono has been seen strictly as a symbol of Japanese females’ classic sexuality. As Dalby
recorded, geishas were the central group in Japanese social life during late nineteenth century to
the 1920s. Geishas met with politicians, businessmen, entrepreneurs, actors, and military men,
possessing complicated relationships with these central social groups. Some Meiji leaders’ wives
were from geisha groups, and a lot of important and high-ranking officials had geishas as their
mistresses (328). These outstanding relationships made the geisha as the central group during
Sun 15
that time. As the developing and spreading of photographic techniques reached Japan,
woodblock print beauties are replaced by pictures of geisha beauties that helped geisha images
spread faster and more extensively than ever before. As the prominent group of woman in
Japanese society, geishas were the ambassadors of Japanese women’s fashion. Till, Warkentyne,
and Patt agreed that, between the late eighteenth century and twentieth century, the geisha lead
Japanese fashion. Their avant-garde style was extended by their gorgeous costumes and elegant
mannerisms (6). Also, Dalby describes the geishas as fashion innovators in her book, writing that
the geisha was always the first group to pick up the most fashionable kimono color and
accessories (324). She explains,
During the late nineteenth century through the 1920s, geisha were without
question the prime arbiters of kimono fashion. They initiated the new trends in
colors and patterns that made this year’s kimono up-to- date, last year’s obsolete.
In addition to the fashion of season, geisha also affected quite basic aspects of
wearing kimono. Among the modern components of kimono having geisha origins,
the taiko style of obi fold, the convenient Nagoya cut of obi, and the wearing of a
haori over jacket stand out (328-329).
At the same time, Dalby provided another example to prove the geisha’s fashion innovator
status in fashion,
In the nineteenth century: geisha fashioned the aesthetic mode of cool chic called
iki...Instead of wrapping the obi high with a straight, square taiko fold in back, for
example, geisha wear the obi low on the waist and fold the taiko with a little bit.
Geisha set the collar back from the nape a hair more than do wives. Allowing
slightly more of the right-hand side of the white collar of their under kimono to
Sun 16
show in front. These subtle asymmetries, hardly noticeable to a foreign eye, along
with the smooth bouffant hair and pointedly pale complexions favored by geisha,
set them apart in Japan as professionals---a traditional category meaning geisha,
actresses and dancers, as opposed to ‘amateur’ wives and daughters. (325)
The phenomenon of women’s kimono is similar to men’s kimonos---the beautiful traditional
technique fabric, the flat patterns and cutting and the image of geisha---all these elements can be
seen in later Japanese fashion designers’ work and even some Western fashion designers’ work.
Furthermore, the concept of unisex style is used by Japanese fashion designers a lot, which could
be found from kimono culture: the kimono began with the same cut for men and women, and the
geishas’ kimono design applied to men at first. Contemporary Japanese designers like Issey
Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, Rei Kawakubo are the typical examples who are inspired by the
cutting and coloring techniques of the kimono, but they were also influenced by post war
Japanese society. Each of these designers have taken traditional elements and transformed them
into modern messages. These messages revolutionized the western fashion world after they
debuted in Paris and continue influence to fashion designers around the world.
In my thesis collection, the elements of the looks speak to the simple cuts and colors of
geishas. These looks also incorporate the “hidden” sensuality of the geisha, such as strips of
colors, which are more noticeable when the wearer moves in the looks. These hidden colorful
details will only show during movement like the color strips at the edge of traditional kimono
cuts which would only reveal themselves as the geisha walked.
.
Sun 17
Fig.8. Thesis Collection
Sun 18
Chapter Three: Japanese Fashion Designers Come to West
3.1 Japanese Fashion Designers Come to West
Today, in the fashion world, there are many brands created by the Japanese, which contain a
variety of looks. But, when Japanese designs first debuted on the runway, Japanese designers
deferred to their national costume, the kimono, and the rich history of cutting styles, colors and
subtle meanings associated with it. When going back to the history of the first Japanese designers
who ventured out to the west, they really pushed their national costume to Western audiences,
combining their kimono with contemporary fashion and new fashion aesthetics. Hugo
Munsterberg, who wrote Images of Asia, The Japanese Kimono, describes this group of Japanese
fashion designers (Yohji, Yamamoto, Rei Kawakubo and Issey Miyake) as “a new generation of
bold, highly imaginative designers” who created a new aesthetics for the international fashion
world (5). He also recorded Donovan Hohn’s report in the New York Times Magazine, which
was put out at the time of those Japanese designers’ arrival in Paris: “Either the Japanese
movement is the most exciting thing to happen to fashion in years, or it’s an outrage, a travesty
of what clothes are supposed to be about”(5).
Among many outstanding creative Japanese fashion designers during the 1980s, Yohji
Yamamoto, Rei Kawakubo and Issey Miyake are the most renowned. From A New Wave in
Fashion, the editor Jean C. Hildreth explains the characteristics of the garments’ form and shape
from these three Japanese designers and gives them high praise.
He writes that
The innovative ideas produced by Rei Kawakubo, Issey Miyake and Yohji
Yamamoto have, in various forms, their antecedents in the great textiles’ tradition
in Japan. Ingenious cut and inherently fine craftsmanship are a part of this
Sun 19
tradition. It is obvious that certain aspects of Japanese costume provided
inspiration to these designers. Farmers’ clothes with loose-fitting jackets and wide
pants, the lounge-coat known as a Tanzen, fine quilting, called Sashiko, the obi,
and the kimono. These three avant-garde designers have become an international
force in the world of fashion. Their ideas are reflected in the work of certain
western designers, but the elegance and comfort of their designers is unsurpassed.
They can never be successfully imitated”(Hildreth 2).
From Hildreth’s evaluation, these three designers cannot be replaced, because their works
emphasize elegantly designed comfortable clothing with innovative construction techniques and
the original fabrics. Hildreth defined these three designers work as “New Wave”, and he
explained the reason, which is that “their work graphically illustrates a reaction against so-called
conventional dressing”(2).
3.2 A New School: Three Japanese Avant-Garde Fashion Designers
Issey Miyake
At the beginning of the 1980s, a new generation of Japanese designers brought a lot of
innovations into international fashion in France. Miyake explains this phenomenon that was
labeled as “Japan, did the Rest”: “In the Eighties, Japanese fashion designers brought a new type
of creativity; they brought something Europe didn’t have. There was a bit of a shock effect, but it
probably helped the European wake up to a new value”(Wood 32). Among these three “Japanese
Avant-Garde Fashion Designers”, Issey Miyake is considered the founding father since he
entered the French fashion scene earlier than Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo.
Sun 20
Issey Miyake was born in 1939 in Hiroshima and graduated from Tama University. His
major was in graphic design, which is unlike other fashion designers who had formal fashion
education. After he graduated from university in 1965, he went to Paris and studied tailoring and
dressmaking at l’ Ecole de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture for a year. In 1966, he started his
fashion career with Hubert de Givenchy, and then went to New York to work with American
designer Geoffrey Beene. In 1970, he founded his design studio. It was very hard for Miyake to
explore his career in New York. His wife Jun helped him a great deal in taking his designs to
show Vogue and Bloomingdales. In April 1973, Issey Miyake was invited to participate in a
show in Paris with seven other designers since at the same year ready-to-wear was to be included
into the French Federation system for the first time (Kawaruma).
The influence that the kimono, as a Japanese traditional costume, had on Miyake can be seen
everywhere through his designs, since he applied the traditional kimono techniques of draping,
pleating and overlapping on his design. Miyake stated, “I like to work in the spirit of the kimono.
Between the body and the fabric there exists only an approximate contact” (Cocks 44), which
can be seen as the central concept of space between the body and the clothes, and is the central
conception behind Miyake’s design. Looking at every show by Miyake, folding or pleating
material is always the first view in his design. From English’s research, folded paper has
religious connotations in Japan, and it can also be seen in tying straw ropes or hanging in front of
a sacred place (English 22), like the kimono, folding paper is a traditional element of Japanese
culture.
Sun 21
Fig.9. Issey Miyake’s paper look (Feel Desain)
Miyake used great amounts of pleated fabric in his designs. He was experienced with
pleating different materials including linen crepe, woven cotton, polyester and tricot jersey.
Pleating fabrics offered Miyake a new perspective of applying fabric, by giving a different textile
surface and movement to originally flat fabrics. At the same time, similar to Kawakubo and
Yamamoto, Miyake also really focuses on the relationship between the body, fabric and space,
since pleated fabric allowed him to create the idea of “between the body and the fabric”. As
Kawamura’s includes,
Through the inventive use of fabric and successive layering, he (Miyake)
developed a concept of fashion based on the use of cloth----or rather, the 'essence'
of clothing: the wrapping of the body in cloth. He has created anti-structural,
organic clothing, which takes on a sculptural quality that suggests a natural
freedom, expressed through the simplicity of its cut, the abundance of new fabrics,
the space between the garment and the body and its general flexibility (21).
Sun 22
Miyake took the essence of the kimono and incorporated other traditional Japanese art traits
as well as Japanese prints to bring revolutionary ideas to the Western fashion scene in the 1980s.
Miyake changed the role pleating had played in fashion design. Also, the use of traditional
painted prints led people to look at prints from another angle.
Fig.10.
Issey Miyake.
The print is a postmodernist painting:
Presenting a Chinese baby and a gun with
traditional pattern background,
Photography: Alex Sainsbury
(style bubble)
Yohji Yamamoto:
Yohji Yamamoto, one of the most famous contemporary Japanese fashion designers, is
renowned for using traditional Japanese costume elements in design works and takes Japanese
nationalism into fashion trends. In A New Wave in Fashion, Hildreth shortly summarizes Yohji’s
biography as,
Yohji Yamamoto was born in Tokyo in 1946. He graduated from Keio University
in 1966 with a degree in Law. He decided not to become a lawyer and instead
entered Bunka Fukuso, a school of fashion design. With prize money he was
awarded at graduation, he went to Paris for a brief sojourn in 1968. Yohji opened
Sun 23
his own ready to wear company in 1972 and after a few unsuccessful years, his
work was finally appreciated in 1977(28).
Yohji Yamamoto’s fashion style was unique in the fashion world when he first expressed his
design works to the west. In Yohji Yamamoto, Yuniya Kawamura describe his style in A
Sartorial Revolutionary that
On his arrival in Paris in the early 1980s, Yamamoto introduced large,
loose-fitting garments, such as asymmetrically constructed jackets with minimal
decoration and sometimes even unfinished seams. Yamamoto’s designs appeared
unisex or gender neutral and his message seemed to be that beauty is socially
constructed and varies from situation to situation, or from culture to culture. Most
of his clothes were black, shocking the fashion world as black was not considered
appropriate for high fashion (59).
Yamamoto’s design provided a new aesthetic perspective to look at what fashion is, what
women’s wear is, and what Eastern culture represents to Western fashion.
Because Western fashion was the mainstream at that time, Yamamoto not only took Japanese
elements as inspiration; the shadow of western contemporary art can similarly be seen in his
collections. Ligaya Salazar stated in With my eyes turned to the past, I walk backwards into the
future that
One of Yamamoto’s greatest sources of inspiration is the clothing worn by the
subjects of August Sander’s series of portraits” which try to relate to Western art.
He wrote, People of the Twentieth Century, taken mostly in the 1920s and ‘30s.
Alluding in particular to his favorite photograph, of a gypsy casually dressed in
black high-waisted trousers, a white collarless cotton vest and a black pin- striped
Sun 24
jacket, and to vintage clothing more generally, Yohji Yamamoto has said on a
number of occasions that he feels the passage of time is what makes these clothes
perfect to him. Ironically, Yamamoto has also repeatedly been quoted as saying
that he thinks perfection to be ugly. His insistence on imperfection relates closely
to one of the key is the ideal of Japanese aesthetics---wabi-sabi[...]
Indeed, the traces of wear and tear on something worn over and over again, the way creases
are embedded in a garment from its owner’s posture and shape, as captured in Sander’s
photographs, and the changes in a textile’s character over time all embody what Yamamoto tries
to achieve in his creations: the perfect imperfection, or in other words, the individuality of a
garment (23).
Fig.11. Gypsy, c.1930, August Sander
This picture shows “One of Yamamoto’s greatest sources of inspiration is the clothing worn by
the subjects of August Sander’s series of portraits” (Yamamoto 22)
Sun 25
Because of his special style for that time, Yohji Yamamoto received plenty of awards for his
works, which built his position in today’s fashion world. Kawamura discussed the reason for
Yamamoto’s success in A Sartorial Revolutionary:
Japanese influence has helped redraw the boundaries of fashion, away from
‘Western’ ideals of the body and conventions of clothing. While some
commentators may have taken the view that Yamamoto’s arrival in Paris, along
with that of other Japanese designers, threatened the dominance of French fashion,
Yamamoto’s success in fact emphasized the importance and influence of Paris in
the global fashion industry. After Kenzo, he was one of the first ‘outside’
designers to be accepted by the western- in this case French- fashion industry. In
order for non-Western designers to be acknowledged and accepted by the French
system, they need to become involved with and endorsed by the established
network of fashion journalists, editors and publicists (Yamamoto 67).
Yamamoto’s view of relationship between the body and cloth is similar to Miyake’s. Both of
them follow the Japanese kimono rules to present their own understandings of space, body and
cloth.
Rei Kawakubo:
The third influential Japanese designer for the west fashion is Rei Kawakubo. She influences
not only Asian fashion designers, but almost every major European fashion designer. According
to Bonnie English, who wrote Japanese Fashion Designers, “Designers including Alexander
Mcqueen, John Galliano, Helmut Lang, Martin Margiela, Ann Demeulemeester, Jil Sander,
Miucca Prada and Donna Karan have all acknowledged her (Rei Kawakubo’s) influence”(68).
As such an influential Asian designer, Kawakubo experienced a hard time to gain today’s
Sun 26
success, but she followed her own concepts of aesthetic and held onto her beliefs about fashion,
which will be described in detail later (see The Avant-Garde, Pg 42).
According to Yuniya Kawamura in The Japanese Revolution in Paris Fashion, Rei
Kawakubo was born in 1941. She graduated from Keio University in Tokyo, same as Yohji
Yamamoto. Before creating her label, Kawakubo was a stylist in the advertising industry, which
explains her later fashion shows, her looks, and exclusive stores with such strong visual appeal.
In 1969, Kawakubo established her first label, and four years later, in 1973, she opened Comme
des Garçons Company in Tokyo (127). Bonnie English introduces Rei Kawakubo in Japanese
Fashion Designer as being from a middle-class intellectual’s family, and studying literature and
philosophy at university, which gave her the chance to have intellectual debates about women’s
status and position in society. This background can be cited as the reason Kawakubo’s designs
have such a strong sense of being “gender neutral”(69).
She showed her first collection in Paris in 1981, which represented her entering the world of
international fashion. After Yohji Yamamoto started his career in Paris, Rei Kawakubo also
opened her first store in Paris in 1982. During the 1980s she remained a good friend of Yohji’s.
Similar to Yohji Yamamoto and Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo has a different standard of
aesthetics. From English’s description, in 1983, Kawakubo commented on the New York bag
lady as the “ideal woman”, and she preferred a woman in 1984 who “earns her own way” as her
proper client. Kawakubo designs clothes for the market of “strong women who attract men with
their minds rather than their bodies” (English 3). From here, Kawakubo explained her general
image of her muse and the target of her work.
English further states, “Kawakubo asserts that she does not have a set of definition of beauty:
‘I want to see things differently to search for beauty. I want to find something nobody has ever
Sun 27
found…it is meaningless to create something predictable’”(74). Kawakubo took religious spirit,
customs, and the concept of imperfection into her beauty standard. According to English,
Kawakubo thinks that, “beauty is the unfinished and the random”(74), and, “I could say that my
work is about looking for accidents. Accidents are quite important for me, something is new
because it is an accident”(74). Also, English quoted Leong Roger’s statement from The Zen and
the Zany: Contemporary Japanese Fashion that “Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons fame finds
beauty in the unfinished, the irregular, the monochromatic and the ambiguous. Placed within the
context of Zen Buddhist philosophy, this translates as an appreciation of poverty, simplicity and
imperfection”(74).
Indeed, because of her distinctive standard for beauty, Kawakubo requires her designs to
follow a different direction, opening a new aesthetic trend. English also states that, similar to
Yamamoto, Kawakubo’s work is deeply influenced by the kimono (72). Kawaruma also agrees
with this evidence by quoting Dalby’s statement: “While the integration of some kimono
elements into their (Yohji Yamamoto, Issey Miyake and Rei Kawakubo) designs is clearly
evident, especially in their earlier works, these designers have also broken a rigid system of
kimono with tight rules”(131). Because of the Japanese kimono style, which makes it hard to
determine sexual distinctions, and her attention to the space between the fabric and the body,
fabric choice is another integral step for Kawakubo’s design.
Sun 28
Fig.12.
1983 ReiKawakubo’s typical Zen look (Metmuseum.org)
Yohji Yamamoto, Rei Kawakubo and Issey Miyake, as members of the first Japanese
avant-garde fashion designer generation, not only opened the cultural gates between Western
fashion and Eastern countries, but are also considered as the fashion designers who tried to build
a lighthouse for later Japanese fashion designers in the west to seek direction across the cultural
divide. What they designed and what they tried changed Japanese fashion and world fashion
indefinitely. Their legacy paves the way for a new way of thinking about aesthetics and fabric in
fashion. As Kawaruma states:
They redefined the nature of Western clothing itself. Western female clothes have
historically been fitted to expose the contours of the body, but these Japanese
designers introduced large, loose-fitting garments, such as jackets with no
traditional construction and a minimum detail; their dresses often have a straight,
simple shape, and their large coats with sweepingly oversized proportions can be
Sun 29
worn by both men and women alike. The conventions of not only the garment
construction but also the normative concept of fashion was challenged. All of this
came at a time when women’s clothes by most traditional Western designers were
moving in the opposite direction, toward a snugger fit and formality. Their view
of fashion was diametrically opposed to the conventional Western fashion, and it
was not their intention to reproduce Western fashion (131).
Miyake, Yamamoto and Kawakubo all motivate the thesis collection significantly. The using
of dark color is from Yamamoto and Kawakubo’s inspiration, which is about their post war
experiences in depressed economic times in Japan. The kimono inspires my long narrow looks,
and Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo’s philosophies inspired my ideas concerning how the
fabric should flow over the body.
Fig.13. These two looks
shows the use of pleating
in this collection
Sun 30
3.3 The New Aesthetic
Widely understood in the fashion world, Japanese fashion designers find a lot of
fundamentals in the traditional kimonos to inspire their designs. They are skilled at combining
and reconstructing Japanese and western elements at the same time to create a completely new
construction, represented by changing the strict rules of wearing traditional kimonos and using
kimono elements in their works. Kawaruma considered these designers as “reinterpreted Western
sartorial conventions”.
One effect on aesthetics is the production of the unisex look: as noted, traditional Japanese
kimonos don’t have strict rules for menswear or women’s wear, therefore, for the basic style,
kimonos have similar style and decoration for men and women. Japanese designers reinforce this
question of gender to create their new concepts of unisex and the aesthetics that define this
ambiguity. In The Japanese Revolution in Paris Fashion, Kawaruma describes this new
concept:“[…] traditionally in Japanese society, sexuality is never revealed overtly, and this
ideology is reflected in the style of kimono, especially for women, these avant-garde designers
reconstructed the whole notion of women’s clothing style; thus they do not reveal sexuality, but
rather conceal it just like the kimono”(137-138). Yohji Yamamoto, Rei Kawakubo and Issey
Miyake, as the first Japanese generation to make a fashion revolution in the European fashion
market, began by breaking the traditional rules regarding males and females wearing different
styles. In doing so, they absorbed the western concept of dress to reconstruct and create a new
aesthetics of fashion. Kawaruma stated,
The designs by Kawakubo, Miyake and Yamamoto were known for being gender
neutral or unisex. Gender roles are determined only by social rules and regulations
Sun 31
formed by society. Clothing constructs and deconstructs gender and gender
differences. Clothing is a major symbol of gender that allows other people to
immediately discover the individual’s biological sex. These three Japanese
designers challenged the normative gender-specificity in clothes, which were the
characteristics of Western clothes (133).
At that time, Western clothing tended to be fitted to accentuate the contours of the body.
These three designers also expressed their idea of beauty and new aesthetic. From Yohji
Yamamoto, Ligaya Salazar quoted Yamamoto’s words to express his aesthetic as “a woman who
is absorbed in her work, who does not care about gaining one’s favo(u)r, strong yet subtle at the
same time, is essentially more seductive. The more she hides and abandons her femininity, the
more it emerges from the very heart of her existence”(26). In Japanese Fashion Designers
English recorded Kawakubo’s ideas about fashion aesthetics: “fashion design is not about
revealing or accentuating the shape of a woman’s body, its purpose is to allow a person to be
what they are”(72). Yohji said, “I like large clothes, the look of a woman in a big man’s shirt. I
find that very attractive”(Gottfried 5).
Fig.14.
Yohji Yamamoto Spring/Summer 1997,
Black wool gabardine jacket and white
cotton shirt.
Model: Guinevere van Seenus,
Photography: Paolo Roversi.
(Yamamoto 27)
Sun 32
Kawaruma also records Miyake and Kawakubo’s concepts behind fashion aesthetics. When
Miyake thinks about aesthetics, he pays more attention to real life than fashion aesthetics.
Kawakubo thinks fashion is always considered the same as the common aesthetic of the public.
However, in Kawakubo’s opinion, beauty is not the same for everyone. Kawakubo tries to make
different beauty from other sources, which has never been found or expected by anybody before:
for example, Kawakubo created a definition of beauty, which is unfinished or random (137).
Kawakubo also said, “I don’t understand the term ‘body-conscious’ very well…I enter the
process from interest in the shapes of their bodies. It bothers Japanese women…to reveal their
bodies. I myself understand that feeling very well, so I take that into account, adding more
material, or whatever. It feels like one would get bored with ‘body-conscious’ clothing”
(Kondo124).
From these records, one can see that how clothing reveals the body has always been a main
concern for these designers. Traditional western aesthetics and fashion trends were not that
important for them. What people really want to wear, what kind of clothing is more comfortable,
and which clothes will make people feel who they are become the most important questions
when the avant-garde designers create their designs. Because of their forward thinking, their
requirements for designing changed, which inspired their new aesthetic. At the same time,
special fabric aesthetics are part of this accumulation of unique fashion aesthetics.
The thesis collection follows the Japanese aesthetic faithfully. In the collection, most looks
do not have a waist or have a low waistline instead. The wide pants and the H line coat, top and
dress, each reflects the subject of being natural without considering accentuating the curves. This
means the form floats above the body, and stays away from the tight waist style of the West.
Sun 33
Fig.15. This is an H line dress from my thesis collection.
3.4 Fabric Choices
Fabric always plays a very important role when designing a collection. Choosing fabric or
designing fabric becomes one of the most important steps during the early stages. A piece of
creative fabric sometimes can give designers fresh inspiration. Looking at Japanese designers’
fashion shows over the years, one can see how they use specific fabrics for their looks, which are
related to their special fashion aesthetic requirement.
Fabric is a medium. By using different fabrics, fashion designers create what they want.
Thus, this medium can be changed into something else and many fashion designers tried to break
the traditional rules of fabric and cut to create their dream “fashion”. Japanese fashion designers
also try to use other material instead of simply using fabric to make garments, they often think
about how to transform traditional Japanese materials into fashion. What they design allows
people to see Japanese history and culture through the fabric. For this point, Issey Miyake, Yohji
Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo, are considered as the primary dynamic examples. According to
Sun 34
English’s record, “[Miyake] also used a fabric called tabi-ura fabric, it’s formerly reserved for
the bottoms of the fitted Japanese sock. Miyake references his cultural heritage via textiles in
many different ways. Aburi-gami, an oiled handmade paper used for making parasols and
lanterns, is often woven in traditional ikat designs and printed with woodblocks. It would seem
that Miyake’s Cicada Pleats garment, of 1989, shares the nature of this semi-transparent paper,
where light is diffused and softened”(22)
Fig.16.
Issey Miyake, Autumn/Winter 1989.Photograph by Irving Penn. Poster design and
typography by Ikko Tanaka (21_21 DOCUMENTS)
In 1976, Miyake started his concept of A Piece of Cloth in which the cloth is used as
one-piece fabric to cover the whole body. His most famous collection, Pleats Please in 1993,
uses an alternative, non-traditional way to make pleated fabric (Kawaruma).
Sun 35
Fig.17. 1993 Issey Miyake’s “Pleats Please”. Model: Raquel Zimmermann Photography: David
Sims (MTV IGGY)
Kawaruma writes, “[Miyake] cut and assembled a garment two-and a half to three times its
proper size, and then the material is folded, ironed and over sewn so that the straight lines
remained in place. Then the garment is placed in a press between two sheets of paper from where
it emerged with permanent pleats”(134). Miyake created this unique method to make his iconic
collection and became famous, mostly through his use of fabric. His innovative fabric is key in
making the “soft sculpture” looks for which he is famous. English also points to Miyake’s
specialized choice of fibers. He states that Miyake uses natural materials a lot, such as paper,
silk, linen, cotton, leather, furs and bamboo. When he keeps the Japanese elements, by recreating
natural materials, he tries to simulate the surface of the natural inspiration of his designs.
Miyake’s famous shell coat, which was created in 1985, when Miyake went into his biomorphic
Sun 36
design period, is a typical example. The surface of the look is like a seashell but still keeps the
simple shape line. (22-23)
Fig.18. 1985 Issey Miyake’s famous
Shell Coat (Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History)
Similar to Miyake, Kawakubo places a lot of his attention on the fabric. Since Kawakubo
announced that she “want[s] to destroy symmetry”, and that “Perfect symmetry is ugly”(Ayre11),
her garments were recognized as unfinished and worn, defined as imperfect and challenging the
common aesthetic. Around this idea, Kawakubo used some new ways to destroy fabric in order
to achieve a fabric that looks like hands waving with rough adge or reformulating the actual
fabric in the loom to produce loom-distressed weaves in their textiles. For Kawakubo, textile
manufacturers play an essential role in making her collection since the selection of thread used
for weaving decides the characteristics of Kawakubo’s idiosyncratic clothing. According to
Kawaruma’s record, the process of getting the right fabric is always complicated and puzzling
for Kawakubo. Most of the time, Kawakubo has indeterminate and theoretical interactions with
Sun 37
her textile manufacturer. The textile manufacturer recalls: “Between four and six months before
a collection, she will call me to talk about what she has in mind…Usually it’s an exceptionally
wooly conversation; sometimes it’s just a single word, a particular mood that she is after that can
come from anywhere.” Then they try many different ways until Kawakubo finds what she really
wants, and then the textile manufacturer uses these acceptable ways to get the exact fabric
(Kawamura 134). Although the whole process of making fabric does not follow the traditional
modes of choosing fabric, the result of Kawakubo’s design work made with these particular
fabrics is indeed different from Western fashion.
Fig.19. Comme des Garcons Autumn/Winter 2011(Penniless, Zen)
Yohji is not an exception in his focus on fabric. His philosophical understanding and thought
about the surface texture and material of a fabric surprises people and is unforgettable. During
Sun 38
his early time, black was his iconic color, which is inspired from his experience during the
darkest time of the Japanese economy. The use of different weights and textures of black fabrics
that reach a varied depth are characteristic of all Yamamoto’s collections. According to
Kawaruma’s statement, “[Yamamoto] is proud of his black and white wool jacquards and
[a]washed wool in his collection because it’s softer and looks second hand”(136). English stated
that Yohji prefers old clothes, which look second-hand. Yamamoto thinks old clothes are like old
friends, and he travelled across Japan to find this timeworn fabric and traditional
costumes.(48-49) Kawaruma quotes, “Actually, I (Yohji Yamamoto) am interested in keeping
the shapes simple, and for me eighty percent of the collection is making new fabric”(136). From
here, the importance of fabric is clear for Yohji Yamamoto. In Yohji Yamamoto, Yamamoto says,
“Fabric is everything. Often I tell my pattern makers, ‘Just listen to the material. What is it going
to say? Just wait. Probably the material will teach you something’”(14).
Salazar stated that in the beginning, Yohji’s design worked as the result of cooperation with
Japan’s textile crafts fabrics and various traditional techniques such as dyeing, embroidery and
knitting. He decided every step of every piece of fabric from the balance of the warp and the
weft to how many times the fabric required washing to achieve the ideal hue and the perfect
balance of old and new. The most important dynamic is that every piece of fabric Yohji uses is
created individually and made in Japan.(14) In The Japanese Revolution in Paris Fashion,
Kawaruma also states that Yohji uses traditional techniques to treat fabric to achieve his aesthetic
requirements: she writes, “Known for innovative fabrics, Yohji has then treated and prepared
using traditional methods such as ‘ stone washing’, and also rinsing bolts of cotton in the Nagoro
River near his factory in Gifu”(web). Besides washing fabric, traditional dyeing was also used.
Sun 39
Salazar states that the most traditional dyeing methods Yohji used were yuzen and shibori,
although they were not used for every season. Salazar describes in detail,
In his (Yohji Yamamoto’s) Spring/Summer 2002 collection, the yuzen dyeing
technique, in which designs are applied to textile using stencils and rice paste, is
sometimes used both in reference to more traditional Japanese dress, as in the
combination of a loose grey folder top, held together by a belt reminiscent of the
date-jime, the sash used to tie and hold in place the under kimono and the outer
kimono, over a yuzen-dyed, patterned full skirt. However, it is more often
integrated into more typical Yohji Yamamoto looks, such as the black top,
trousers and skirt- wrap combination that features brightly colored yuzen pattern
on the edge of the skirt and the front of the trousers only. A similar approach can
be seen in his Autumn/Winter 1994 and Spring/Summer 1995 collections, when
Yamamoto also used shibori, a traditional dyeing technique similar to tie-dye, in
which patterns are made by shaping, wringing and twisting the fabric(14).
Fig.20.
Yohji Yamamoto Spring/Summer 2002, loose
grey pinstriped sleeveless suit jacket, date-jime
belt and blue patterned full yuzen-dyed skirt,
Photography Catwalking.com
(Yohji Yamamoto, Pg21)
Sun 40
Fig.21. Yohji Yamamoto Spring/Summer 1995
yuzen-dyed (GOTHIC TROPIC)
Indeed, using Japanese-made fabric caused Yamamoto’s work to be described as iconically
Japanese. The contribution of Yamamoto’s fabric cannot be ignored by the fashion industry. For
anyone observing the use of fabrics, Yamamoto’s persistence on using authentic material helps
the traditional techniques employed for making fabric and their background to be understood by
the Western fashion industry. According to Salazar, Yamamoto used so many Japanese
traditional textile fabrics because he is really proud and wants to support his own country’s
traditional fabric-making industry. For this industry, Yamamoto provided fresh ideas to those
traditional producers, helping them combine new concepts with old techniques to create the next
wave of fabrics. Yamamoto tried to create new business support for those old producers to keep
their jobs, while also helping fabric studios to stay in production longer. (73)
Sun 41
As textile choices play a large part in designers’ work, these three Japanese designers
carefully chose their unique fabrics for their collections. Miyake, Kawakubo and Yamamoto look
at their own country, and at traditional cultural elements, so as to use the most original and
natural fabrics to present who they are and where they come from. They brought their inspired
costumes to the international fashion scene, as well as their fabric industry to the world.
In terms of the thesis collection, fabric choice was a thoughtful process. Every look uses
natural wool for the main garments. The difference is some of them use woolen fabrics and some
of them use worsted fabrics, based on the specific requirements for every look, which followed
Yohji Yamamoto’s process, comparing the different surface and thickness of fabrics. Except for
the black, the five separate colors are from traditional Japanese Kimono colors. Because of the
matt black texture, colorful choice of fabric helped to brighten the garments. The fabric choices
for this collection attempt to create contrast with dynamic textiles and complementary colors.
Fig.22.This green look shows the contrast of matte and
sleek, dark colors and bright color, flat and pleat
Sun 42
Chapter Four: The Avant-Garde
4.1 The Avant-Garde
Indeed, Japanese contemporary fashion designers blew a new style wind into the Western
Fashion Empire, and what those Japanese designers created can be seen as their exhibiting
national spirit. This new fashion is related to the new ways of using color, the new structure of
lines, and new fabric textures. At the same time, this new fashion also can be seen as expressing
a new way of exploring national identity, a new way of thinking about gender, and a new
definition of aesthetic. From Images of Asia, The Japanese Kimono, Munsterberg describes,
“The most Japanese qualities of these new fashions are their use of subdued colors such as black,
grey, and brown, expressing the shibui feeling (‘astringent or unostentatious taste’) so
characteristic of the tea ceremony and of Zen Buddhism, the informal cut of the garments, which
do not hug the body but wrap around it, and the use of typically Japanese fabrics such as rough
wools, sometimes mixed with silk, all kinds of cotton, raw silk, and strange materials such as
fishnet and paper”(8). From this description and statement, Japanese contemporary designers
open a door for old Japanese tradition to find way into the modern Western fashion.
As the success of each of the three designers was recognized across Europe, various critiques
on these designers came from all sides of the industry. Kawaruma stated, “Japanese designers
continue to set the trends all over the world, receiving the highest compliments in the fashion
industry using, whether consciously or subconsciously, their cultural heritage as their forte. They
all have now become the favorites of the French and other Western press. A French journalist
wrote: ‘big or small, ‘our’ Japanese touch all fashion creation’” (94). “The Day After”, “Post
Hiroshima” and “a sartorial revolution in Paris”, these different names from critics discuss the
Sun 43
three designers’ avant-garde designs (Kawaruma125). According to Kawaruma’s record,
Jennifer Craik points out
“the Japanese influence has partially redrawn the boundaries of fashion away
from ‘Western’ ideals of the body, body-space relations and conventions of
clothing, and the principals of Western fashion have incorporated non-European
influences, traditions and forms into mainstream practices. Many fashion writers
discuss Japanese designers in Paris from a humanistic point of view, focusing on
their designs and clothes in relation to bodies and female aesthetic appearance —
all of which are significant in understanding their popularity”(93).
The three designers go against the grain of everything in Western society. The dominant
social value and popular culture in the west is not hardwired into their customs, giving them free
control to denounce Western tradition in fashion. They didn’t follow the Western aesthetic of
elements in fashion and questioned Western popular fashion culture (Kawaruma). They rebelled
against everything, which makes their designs different. In an interview with Takeji Hirakawa,
Kawakubo said, “I never lose my ability to rebel, I get angry and that anger becomes my energy
for certain. I wouldn’t be able to create anything if I stop rebelling”(1990:21).
Beside their dissident reflections, the poor Japanese economy following World War II was a
main inspiration for their design. English explains, “Both designers (Yohji Yamamoto and Rei
Kawakubo) were products of post-war Japan and grew up in a country that was responding to the
economic woes of the 1930s and 40s, a time when Japan suffered the effects of economic
depression. During their early childhood, Japan was one of the poorest countries in Asia and
these decades were commonly referred to as kuraitani- the Valley of Darkness. The Japanese
were tenuously picking up their social and cultural pieces, as well as attempting to reconstruct
Sun 44
their homes and cities after the catastrophes of war”(68). Therefore, it was no surprise that
themes of anti-war and darkness became influences in Kawakubo and Yamamoto’s designs, and
shows up in deconstructed and remade army uniforms as can be often seen in many of their
fashion shows.
Fig.23. Comme des Garçons Spring/Summer 2011
These looks show Rei Kawakubo’s use dark colors to express dark feelings.
War & anti-war is often the concept for her collections (style.com)
Western people think these Japanese designs are avant-garde or revolutionary in the fashion
world, but, in reality, these Japanese designers thoughtfully and skillfully take their nationalism,
life experience, traditional elements, and techniques and incorporate them into their designs.
Their style is a part of them and their designs are who they are.
Yohji Yamamoto, Rei Kawakubo and Issey Miyake really broke the mold, creating
something new and challenging for the Western fashion world. Kawaruma states,
They broke the boundary between the West and the East, fashion and anti-fashion,
and modern and anti-modern […] these designers placed a great significance on
Sun 45
clothing inherited from the past, including Japanese farmers’ clothes designed
through necessity and adapted dyed textile and quilting from Ancient Japan [...]
These designers presented them to the fashion world, gave the opportunity for ‘the
neglected’ to make their existence known, and transformed them into ‘fashion’.
Their method constitutes a system designed to overthrow the existing regulations
and norms of clothing and fashion”(125-126).
Sun 46
Chapter Five: The Influence of Japanese Fashion on Western Fashion
5.1 The Influence of Japanese Fashion on Western fashion
Across the Fashion Empire, the influence of Japanese culture in Western fashion was not a
new and surprising issue. Kawaruma provides a list in The Japanese revolution in Paris Fashion
to prove the influence played on Western fashion by the Japanese culture has been going on for a
long time. The list is as following:
Jeanne Lanvin’s dress with a bolero jacket in 1930 simulates kimono sleeves.
Similarly, at the beginning of the twentieth century, as boning and corsetry were
reduced to a minimum, Paul Poiret’s-fitting kimono sleeve came in, and the
high-boned collar was abandoned for an open V-neck resembling, once again, a
kimono. Chrysanthemum prints or exotic fabrics were used by many couturiers,
such as Charles Worth and Coco Chanel. Those who were fascinated by the
kimono’s geometry, like Madeleine Vionnet, cut dresses in flat panels and
decorated them only with wave - seaming, which is a Japanese hand-stitching
technique. The East remained a fashion influence through the First World War.
Western designers incorporated Japanese elements into Western clothing with
Western interpretation while remaining within the normative definitions of
clothing and fashion (93-94).
However, today’s Japanese fashion designers name their labels and brands based on their
nationality and culture. The design work and the influence of what they make causes Western
fashion to pay more attention to Asian fashion and appreciate it with better insight.
The contemporary Japanese designers represented and opened a different Japanese fashion
era. These culturally Japanese elements using kimono, Geisha, and Yuzen told people what
Sun 47
Asian fashion could be. On the other hand, the pattern, the shape, the color, and the fabric they
used told people what Asian designers could offer to Western fashion. Issey Miyake, Yohji
Yamamoto, Rei Kawakubo, influenced the following generation of fashion designers, both in
Japan and around the world. Many European fashion designers have been influenced greatly by
Japan. The entire Western fashion world was impacted from this different concept of aesthetics
and different perspective of fashion. Fashion journalist Mark O’ Flaherty announced, “The
Japanese designers have had an unprecedented impact upon other leading fashion designers
throughout Europe, Britain and America”(qtd. English 129). The following list includes some of
the many exhibitions within the past twenty years featuring contemporary Japanese fashion
design:
•
Orientalism at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum, 1994
•
Japonisme et Mode at the Palais Galliera costume museum, 1996
•
Touches d’ Exoticisme at the Art Museum of Fashion and Textile in Paris,
1998
•
Japonism at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York, 1999,
These repeated exposures demonstrate that Western designers have been inspired by Eastern
textiles, designs, construction and utility for long time, including Japanese kimonos (93).
In The Japanese revolution in Paris Fashion, Kawaruma states that many Japanese fashion
designers are considered as “the most successful and internationally know designers in the west”,
and in the French fashion system, they have a special style and status which cannot be replaced
(Kawaruma 91-92). Also, she explains that “These Japanese have proven firstly to Paris, and
then to the world, that they are masters of fashion design proposing that Western societies
reassess and redefined the concept of clothing and fashion and also the universality of beauty.
Sun 48
They shocked fashion professionals in the West by showing something none of them had seen
before”(92).
When the whole group of Japanese fashion designers received attention from Western
fashion, the influence from these specific designers went far and wide. In Japanese Fashion
Designers, English quotes Mark O’ Flaherty who explains the influence Yohji Yamamoto had on
Western fashion:
In the three decades since Y [Yamamoto] came on the scene, his once radical
ideas excited colleagues as diverse as Junya Watanabe, Jun Takahashi and Martin
Margiela. His odd shapes and skewed proportions have informed an entire
generation of Belgians and lately seem to be turning up everywhere, thematically
threaded through collections as unalike as those of Marc Jacobs and Miuccia
Prada and even highly raised newcomers like the American Jasmin Shokrian, who
was not even a decade old when Y [Yamamoto] first showed in Paris(129).
Similarity, Rei Kawakubo is another living fashion bible. English states Rei Kawakubo is
one of the leading designers of creating fashion works, which always applies strong, steadfast,
and confident twenty-first century women as concepts. This causes other designers to look at her
work as a guide of the new fashion direction (English).
For Rei Kawakubo’s influence, Bonnie English records fashion writer and educator Rebecca
Arnold’s words, who argued in 2001 that “Margiela’s approach undermined the notion of the
designer as unique, individual creator, by conceding that each design is the product of fashion’s
history’ and that Margiela shared the same spirit as Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo,
recognizing imperfection as a route to authenticity… in contrast to fashion’s traditional role as
the purveyor of ephemeral, perfect fantasies”(132).
Sun 49
As the occurrence of the Japanese inspiration was spread in Western fashion circles, Western
fashion designers began looking for the bases of those Japanese designers’ practice to use in their
own works. Through color, fabric, details and style, Western fashion designers tried to
understand Japanese fashion from different directions. They used those elements as design points
and tried to create something new, which caused an Eastern-style fashion trend. After those
Japanese fashion designers made a revolution in the West and created an international style of
fashion based in Japanese culture, Western fashion designers also found this Eastern culture as
design inspiration and designed a lot of work focused on Asia from a Western perspective.
According to English’s record in “Japanese Fashion Designers”
People who took the new Japanese designers’ influence to London and New York
included John Richmond and fellow London club land prodigy Maria Cornejo,
who started their 3D Richmond Cornejo label in 1984. Richmond says, when I
was growing up you couldn’t find black clothes. It was only with the Japanese that
black really started. I love using black because I grew up in Manchester where the
light always makes color look grim.
Cornejo, whose label Zero was created in New York in the late 1990s, commented
that for her the influence of the Japanese was in ‘their cutting… and they also
…broke new ground’ (ibid.). Similarity, O’ Flaherty feels that Rick Owens, then a
19-year-old Goth art student, shows an ‘artful deconstruction…[that] shares the
Japanese spirit’ and that Owens found the Japanese designers’ ‘outsider status as
much an inspiration as their cuts’ (ibid).(129-130).
In addition, English stated that Belgian designers followed wabi-sabi as a brand new design
concept. Wabi-sabi is a word referring to the beauty of the imperfect or unfinished, which is
Sun 50
applied a lot by Miyake, Yamamoto and Kawakubo in their works. Lenard Koren’s explains, “It
(Wabi-sabi) refers to the beauty of the unpretentious, simple and unconventional. It is
anti-rationalistic and implies an intuitive world view; it aims at individual solutions that are
specific to every object; uniqueness instead of mass production; organic forms; toleration of
neglect and wear; corrosion and contamination used to intensify the expression; ambiguity and
contradiction; suitability being less important. Beauty can be enticed out of ugliness”(qtd.
English 131). Besides this phenomenon, Western fashion designers even started to look at the
Japanese market. Bonnie English states “Many young Belgian fashion designers felt that they
would never have been able to get a foothold in fashion if their work had not been embraced by
Japanese youth who were looking for innovative clothing to express their personalities”(131).
After the Japanese designers arrived in the western world, Western fashion started to change.
They brought new concepts, new perspectives, and new aesthetics to fill Western fashion and to
influence international dress. Even though the whole fashion world looked at Issey Miyake,
Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo as designers from Japan, these Japanese designers could no
longer consider themselves exclusively Japanese designers. They put their sights on the whole
fashion world at the beginning. The three designers, Yohji Yamamoto, Rei Kawakubo and Issey
Miyake are the major examples. They define themselves as international designers instead of
Japanese. In Kawaruma’s record, “Kawakubo explained: ‘I am not happy to be classified as
another Japanese designer…There is no one characteristic that all Japanese designers have…
what I do is not influence.’ Similarly, Yamamoto says: ‘I am not a Japanese creator but just a
creator.’ Miyake shares the same view with the other two and remarks: ‘I don’t want to express
Japanese culture. I’ve always wanted to be between cultures. More and more we are going to
consider ourselves members of a global society, not just of one particular culture.’”(96).
Sun 51
Indeed, being a ‘Japanese fashion designer’ is not enough for each of them. What they want
to be and should be are fashion designers. They brought the Japanese fashion industry to the
West, and Japanese culture to the world. Their designs continue to influence world fashion from
the time of their arrival on the scene and for following generations. As world fashion fusion, and
East-West cultural fusion became more and more of an obvious topic in fashion, these three
designers helped bring the movement forward.
Sun 52
Chapter Six: Conclusion
6.1 Conclusion
Nowadays, more and more young Japanese fashion designers go abroad, and are exposed to
western culture. Those former Japanese fashion designers opened a gate and built a road for
these newer generations to follow. They created a broader environment with more opportunities.
In these former designers, Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto are just a few.
Today’s Asian fashion designers are doing the same thing for future Asian fashion designers.
The thesis collection follows the spirit of Japanese culture, with a concept of the Reserved. In
this context, those colorful fabric pieces play an important role, since those colors are not there to
actively draw attention, and they reveal themselves seductively when the wearer walk making
them seem like the small flashes of colors are reserved for a particular observer. This reflects the
Japanese reserved character. The main black is used as a shelter for those colorful pieces, but
also as an “honor”. It honors those Japanese designers who revolutionized the western fashion
world by making black into high fashion color. This revolution changed the perspective about
fashion aesthetic and the Japanese fashion designers’ status in the Western fashion world. The
whole collection is focused on using contemporary methods to contain Japanese spirit, exposing
the influence of Eastern fashion on contemporary world fashion.
Sun 53
Works Cited
Ayre, Elizabeth. "On the Road with Wim and Yohji: Docufashion." International Herald
Tribune 27 Dec. 1989: 11. Print.
Hildreth, Jean. A New Wave in Fashion: Three Japanese Designers, March 1-April 24, 1983.
Phoenix, AZ: Institute, 1983. Print.
" Comme des Garçons Spring/Summer 2011." Style.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 May 2013.
Dalby, Liza Crihfield. Kimono: Fashioning Culture. N.p.: University of Washington, 2001.
Print.
English, Bonnie. Japanese Fashion Designers: The Work and Influence of Issey Miyake, Yohji
Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo. Oxford: Berg, 2011. Print.
Gottfried, Carolyn. "Rising Native Son." Women’s Wear Daily 15 Apr. 1982: 5. Print.
Hirakawa, Takeji. " Comme des Garçons." GAP Magazine 1990: 21-45. Print.
Kawamura, Yuniya. The Japanese Revolution in Paris Fashion. Oxford [England: Berg, 2004.
Print.
Kawamura, Yuniya. "The Japanese Revolution in Paris’." Through the Surface. N.p., 2004. Web.
22 May 2013.
Kawaruma, Yuniya. "A Sartorial Revolutionary." Yohji Yamamoto. London: V&A, 2011. N. pag.
Print.
Kondo, Dorienne. "The Aesthetics and Politics of Japanese Identity in the Fashion Industry."
Re-Made in Japan, Everyday Life and Consumer Taste in a Changing Society. New
Haven & London: Yale UP, 1992. N. pag. Print.
Monday, Jay Cocks. "A Change of Clothes: Issey Miyake." Time n.d.: 40. Print.
Salazar, Ligaya. "With My Eyes Turned to the Past, I Walk Backwards into the Future." Yohji
Yamamoto. London: V&A, 2011. N. pag. Print.
Seigle, Cecilia Segawa, Utamaro Kitagawa, Yoshitoshi Taiso, and Kunichika Toyohara. A
Courtesan's Day: Hour by Hour. Amsterdam: Hotei, 2004. Print. Sun 54
Till, Barry, Michiko Warkentyne, and Judith Patt. The Kimono of the Geisha-diva Ichimaru. San
Francisco: Pomegranate, 2006. Print.
Wood, Dana. "Miyake’s Lust for life." Women’s Wear Daily 18 Dec. 1996: 32. Print.
Figures:
"Dress." Metmuseum.org. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, n.d. Web. 22 May 2013.
"GOTHIC TROPIC." Gothtrop.tumblr. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 May 2013.
"Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History."Issey Miyake: "Seashell" or "Shell-knit" Coat (2003.79.16).
N.p., n.d. Web. 22 May 2013.
Luciano, Aiello, and Gallo Marco. "ISSEY MIYAKE FASHION." Review. Web log post. Feel
Desain, The Creative Side.N.p., n.d. Web. 22 May 2013.
"Penniless, Zen." Web log post. : Comme des Garçons FW2011. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 May 2013.
"Pleats Please Pride." Review. We blog post. 'Style Bubble' N.p., 10 June 2012. Web. 22 May
2013.
Toksala. "Issey Miyake: Fashion Designer, Hiroshima Survivor." Web log post. MTV IGGY.
N.p., 15 July 2009. Web. 22 May 2013.
"21_21 DOCUMENTS." Review. We blog post.
1. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 May 2013.
– A Dialogue with Midori Kitamura Part